SACRAMENTO — Hundreds of protesters were not only seeing red, they wore red T-shirts as they descended on the state Capitol today to decry proposed legislation that would end their ability to let their schoolchildren opt out of vaccinations.

Chanting “My Child, My Choice” and carrying signs that read “Force my veggies, not vaccines,” and “Protect the Children, Not Big Pharma — No on SB 277,” the crowd listened as one speaker after another addressed both the harm they said vaccines have caused their children and the threat of an arrogant state government that is seeking to make health care decisions on their behalf.

The raucous rally preceded a Senate Health Committee hearing this afternoon at which nine senators are expected to vote on Senate Bill 277, co-authored by Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, a pediatrician. The bill would require that only children who have been immunized for various diseases, including measles and whooping cough, be admitted to school in California. Only medical exemptions would be allowed.

The bill also would require schools to notify parents of immunization rates at their child’s school.

But many in the crowd, as well as the speakers, said they planned to fight the decision every step of the way.

Bob Sears, a pediatrician from Capistrano Beach noted for his unorthodox views on children vaccination, exhorted the crowd not to lose hope or get discouraged.

“Get out there and fight for your rights,” he told them, adding that even if the bill passes the health committee today, they can pick up the battle with the Senate Education Committee, which will hear the bill in the coming weeks.

While Sears told the crowd he gives vaccines every day, he said he does so “more slowly and gradually, and most important: I give my patients a choice.”

And that, he said, is what today’s rally was all about.

“It’s not about are vaccines good or bad or safe or dangerous? It’s about one thing: Do you have the right to informed consent?”

The contentious debate over what some have dubbed “the V-word” was spurred by a measles outbreak that began in Disneyland in December, and ultimately spread through to 18 states where it has infected 159 people, including 134 in California.

An overwhelming number of scientists say there is no evidence that vaccines cause autism or any other affliction. But Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has co-authored a book challenging the safety of thimerosal, a ingredient containing mercury that he says is still included in some vaccines, repeated much of the same themes he hit Tuesday in speeches in both San Francisco and in Sacramento.

Calling people who oppose vaccines “anti-vaxxers,” he said, is “misogynistic.”

“It is anti-woman and anti-mother,” Kennedy told the crowd, adding that the mothers he has met during his crusade “have read the science and … they could destroy any politician.”

“These women and the parents are traumatized at what has happened to their children,” Kennedy said. “They don’t have time for politics — politics has been invisible, until this moment.”

That notion that thimerosal and vaccines are dangerous has been widely discredited by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and multiple scientific studies. As a precaution, however, the Food and Drug Administration in 1999 recommended removing thimerosal from vaccines given to infants.

But Kennedy’s words resonated with San Jose resident Elaine Shtein, who has a 5-year-old son with autism that she believes was brought on after he received a vaccine when he was a baby.

Shtein said she drove up before dawn to attend the rally because “if I don’t do it, who will? If we don’t make ourselves heard, then this will pass and our choice will go away.”

Auburn resident Kathleen Johnson, 34, who home-schools her four young girls and brought them to the rally as a lesson in civics, said if SB 277 passes she and her husband — who own a personal training studio — plan to move to Oregon.

“It comes down to freedom and liberty, and we can’t ask people to live against their conscience,” Johnson said. “When genetics loads the gun, we don’t want to let toxins pull the trigger.”

State health officials said that of the 134 people who contracted measles, 57 were not vaccinated and another 25 had at least one dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. Records were unavailable for other vaccinations.

In an 11-page analysis of the bill released earlier this week by the Senate Health Committee staff, Pan said California became “the epicenter of the outbreak” resulting from unvaccinated people infecting vulnerable individuals including children, some of whom are unable to receive vaccinations because of their age or health conditions.

Pan said that measles had spread through the state and the country in large part because of communities where many people were unvaccinated — and allowed to remain so citing “personal belief exemptions” — offered by California and 19 other states.

In certain pockets of the California, Pan noted, exemption rates are as high as 21 percent, which he said, “places our communities at risk for preventable disease.”

Supporters of the SB 277 include Vaccinate California, which sponsored the bill, as well as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the California Medical Association, the California State Parent Teacher Association, Santa Cruz and Los Angeles counties, and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

Opponents of the bill include the California Chiropractic Association, the California Naturopathic Doctors Association (unless amended), the California Right to Life Committee, the Homeschool Association of California, Families for Early Autism Treatment, the California Pro Life Council, and the Pacific Justice Institute for Public Policy.

In the analysis, the American Civil Liberties Union of California wrote that while it appreciates that vaccination against childhood diseases “is a prudent step that should be promoted for the general welfare,” it does not believe there has been sufficient need “to warrant conditioning access to education on mandatory vaccination for each of the diseases covered by this bill.”

The civil rights group also cited reforms enacted by Assembly Bill 2109, authored by then-Assemblyman Pan in 2012, and which became law but only went into effect on Jan. 1, 2014. It mandates that parents must meet with a medical professional and attest that they had discussed the risks of not vaccinating their child before they could opt out.

That law’s reforms, said the ACLU, “should be allowed an opportunity to work before they are stricken and replaced by an approach that restricts the fundamental right to education.”

Meanwhile, the Association of American Physician and Surgeons noted that the need for informed consent “is a firmly established principle of medical ethics and human rights,” and that the state “has no right to force medical interventions on people without their consent.”

Similar arguments last month swayed legislators in both Washington and Oregon to reject attempts to tighten their vaccine laws as California is now attempting to do.

Even if the bill passes today, it will still have to wind its way through several other committees in both houses of the Democratic-controlled Legislature, then be signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, before it could become law.

Kennedy — who says his six children were vaccinated — has said he is “fiercely pro-vaccine,” as long as they are safe. But he contends that thimerosal remains in trace amounts in more vaccines than people realize.

During an hour-long talk on the subject at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on Tuesday, he repeatedly questioned the integrity of the CDC, at one point calling it “a sock puppet for the vaccine industry.” The CDC’s refusal to acknowledge there is an autism crisis, Kennedy added, “is like global warming denying, but worse. It’s Holocaust denial.”

SACRAMENTO — Hundreds of protesters were not only seeing red, they wore red T-shirts as they descended on the state Capitol today to decry proposed legislation that would end their ability to let their schoolchildren opt out of vaccinations.

Chanting “My Child, My Choice” and carrying signs that read “Force my veggies, not vaccines,” and “Protect the Children, Not Big Pharma — No on SB 277,” the crowd listened as one speaker after another addressed both the harm they said vaccines have caused their children and the threat of an arrogant state government that is seeking to make health care decisions on their behalf.

The raucous rally preceded a Senate Health Committee hearing this afternoon at which nine senators are expected to vote on Senate Bill 277, co-authored by Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, a pediatrician. The bill would require that only children who have been immunized for various diseases, including measles and whooping cough, be admitted to school in California. Only medical exemptions would be allowed.

The bill also would require schools to notify parents of immunization rates at their child’s school.

But many in the crowd, as well as the speakers, said they planned to fight the decision every step of the way.

Bob Sears, a pediatrician from Capistrano Beach noted for his unorthodox views on children vaccination, exhorted the crowd not to lose hope or get discouraged.

“Get out there and fight for your rights,” he told them, adding that even if the bill passes the health committee today, they can pick up the battle with the Senate Education Committee, which will hear the bill in the coming weeks.

While Sears told the crowd he gives vaccines every day, he said he does so “more slowly and gradually, and most important: I give my patients a choice.”

And that, he said, is what today’s rally was all about.

“It’s not about are vaccines good or bad or safe or dangerous? It’s about one thing: Do you have the right to informed consent?”

The contentious debate over what some have dubbed “the V-word” was spurred by a measles outbreak that began in Disneyland in December, and ultimately spread through to 18 states where it has infected 159 people, including 134 in California.

An overwhelming number of scientists say there is no evidence that vaccines cause autism or any other affliction. But Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has co-authored a book challenging the safety of thimerosal, a ingredient containing mercury that he says is still included in some vaccines, repeated much of the same themes he hit Tuesday in speeches in both San Francisco and in Sacramento.

Calling people who oppose vaccines “anti-vaxxers,” he said, is “misogynistic.”

“It is anti-woman and anti-mother,” Kennedy told the crowd, adding that the mothers he has met during his crusade “have read the science and … they could destroy any politician.”

“These women and the parents are traumatized at what has happened to their children,” Kennedy said. “They don’t have time for politics — politics has been invisible, until this moment.”

That notion that thimerosal and vaccines are dangerous has been widely discredited by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and multiple scientific studies. As a precaution, however, the Food and Drug Administration in 1999 recommended removing thimerosal from vaccines given to infants.

But Kennedy’s words resonated with San Jose resident Elaine Shtein, who has a 5-year-old son with autism that she believes was brought on after he received a vaccine when he was a baby.

Shtein said she drove up before dawn to attend the rally because “if I don’t do it, who will? If we don’t make ourselves heard, then this will pass and our choice will go away.”

Auburn resident Kathleen Johnson, 34, who home-schools her four young girls and brought them to the rally as a lesson in civics, said if SB 277 passes she and her husband — who own a personal training studio — plan to move to Oregon.

“It comes down to freedom and liberty, and we can’t ask people to live against their conscience,” Johnson said. “When genetics loads the gun, we don’t want to let toxins pull the trigger.”

State health officials said that of the 134 people who contracted measles, 57 were not vaccinated and another 25 had at least one dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. Records were unavailable for other vaccinations.

In an 11-page analysis of the bill released earlier this week by the Senate Health Committee staff, Pan said California became “the epicenter of the outbreak” resulting from unvaccinated people infecting vulnerable individuals including children, some of whom are unable to receive vaccinations because of their age or health conditions.

Pan said that measles had spread through the state and the country in large part because of communities where many people were unvaccinated — and allowed to remain so citing “personal belief exemptions” — offered by California and 19 other states.

In certain pockets of the California, Pan noted, exemption rates are as high as 21 percent, which he said, “places our communities at risk for preventable disease.”

Supporters of the SB 277 include Vaccinate California, which sponsored the bill, as well as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the California Medical Association, the California State Parent Teacher Association, Santa Cruz and Los Angeles counties, and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

Opponents of the bill include the California Chiropractic Association, the California Naturopathic Doctors Association (unless amended), the California Right to Life Committee, the Homeschool Association of California, Families for Early Autism Treatment, the California Pro Life Council, and the Pacific Justice Institute for Public Policy.

In the analysis, the American Civil Liberties Union of California wrote that while it appreciates that vaccination against childhood diseases “is a prudent step that should be promoted for the general welfare,” it does not believe there has been sufficient need “to warrant conditioning access to education on mandatory vaccination for each of the diseases covered by this bill.”

The civil rights group also cited reforms enacted by Assembly Bill 2109, authored by then-Assemblyman Pan in 2012, and which became law but only went into effect on Jan. 1, 2014. It mandates that parents must meet with a medical professional and attest that they had discussed the risks of not vaccinating their child before they could opt out.

That law’s reforms, said the ACLU, “should be allowed an opportunity to work before they are stricken and replaced by an approach that restricts the fundamental right to education.”

Meanwhile, the Association of American Physician and Surgeons noted that the need for informed consent “is a firmly established principle of medical ethics and human rights,” and that the state “has no right to force medical interventions on people without their consent.”

Similar arguments last month swayed legislators in both Washington and Oregon to reject attempts to tighten their vaccine laws as California is now attempting to do.

Even if the bill passes today, it will still have to wind its way through several other committees in both houses of the Democratic-controlled Legislature, then be signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, before it could become law.

Kennedy — who says his six children were vaccinated — has said he is “fiercely pro-vaccine,” as long as they are safe. But he contends that thimerosal remains in trace amounts in more vaccines than people realize.

During an hour-long talk on the subject at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on Tuesday, he repeatedly questioned the integrity of the CDC, at one point calling it “a sock puppet for the vaccine industry.” The CDC’s refusal to acknowledge there is an autism crisis, Kennedy added, “is like global warming denying, but worse. It’s Holocaust denial.”

SACRAMENTO — Hundreds of protesters were not only seeing red, they wore red T-shirts as they descended on the state Capitol today to decry proposed legislation that would end their ability to let their schoolchildren opt out of vaccinations.

Chanting “My Child, My Choice” and carrying signs that read “Force my veggies, not vaccines,” and “Protect the Children, Not Big Pharma — No on SB 277,” the crowd listened as one speaker after another addressed both the harm they said vaccines have caused their children and the threat of an arrogant state government that is seeking to make health care decisions on their behalf.

The raucous rally preceded a Senate Health Committee hearing this afternoon at which nine senators are expected to vote on Senate Bill 277, co-authored by Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, a pediatrician. The bill would require that only children who have been immunized for various diseases, including measles and whooping cough, be admitted to school in California. Only medical exemptions would be allowed.

The bill also would require schools to notify parents of immunization rates at their child’s school.

But many in the crowd, as well as the speakers, said they planned to fight the decision every step of the way.

Bob Sears, a pediatrician from Capistrano Beach noted for his unorthodox views on children vaccination, exhorted the crowd not to lose hope or get discouraged.

“Get out there and fight for your rights,” he told them, adding that even if the bill passes the health committee today, they can pick up the battle with the Senate Education Committee, which will hear the bill in the coming weeks.

While Sears told the crowd he gives vaccines every day, he said he does so “more slowly and gradually, and most important: I give my patients a choice.”

And that, he said, is what today’s rally was all about.

“It’s not about are vaccines good or bad or safe or dangerous? It’s about one thing: Do you have the right to informed consent?”

The contentious debate over what some have dubbed “the V-word” was spurred by a measles outbreak that began in Disneyland in December, and ultimately spread through to 18 states where it has infected 159 people, including 134 in California.

An overwhelming number of scientists say there is no evidence that vaccines cause autism or any other affliction. But Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has co-authored a book challenging the safety of thimerosal, a ingredient containing mercury that he says is still included in some vaccines, repeated much of the same themes he hit Tuesday in speeches in both San Francisco and in Sacramento.

Calling people who oppose vaccines “anti-vaxxers,” he said, is “misogynistic.”

“It is anti-woman and anti-mother,” Kennedy told the crowd, adding that the mothers he has met during his crusade “have read the science and … they could destroy any politician.”

“These women and the parents are traumatized at what has happened to their children,” Kennedy said. “They don’t have time for politics — politics has been invisible, until this moment.”

That notion that thimerosal and vaccines are dangerous has been widely discredited by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and multiple scientific studies. As a precaution, however, the Food and Drug Administration in 1999 recommended removing thimerosal from vaccines given to infants.

But Kennedy’s words resonated with San Jose resident Elaine Shtein, who has a 5-year-old son with autism that she believes was brought on after he received a vaccine when he was a baby.

Shtein said she drove up before dawn to attend the rally because “if I don’t do it, who will? If we don’t make ourselves heard, then this will pass and our choice will go away.”

Auburn resident Kathleen Johnson, 34, who home-schools her four young girls and brought them to the rally as a lesson in civics, said if SB 277 passes she and her husband — who own a personal training studio — plan to move to Oregon.

“It comes down to freedom and liberty, and we can’t ask people to live against their conscience,” Johnson said. “When genetics loads the gun, we don’t want to let toxins pull the trigger.”

State health officials said that of the 134 people who contracted measles, 57 were not vaccinated and another 25 had at least one dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. Records were unavailable for other vaccinations.

In an 11-page analysis of the bill released earlier this week by the Senate Health Committee staff, Pan said California became “the epicenter of the outbreak” resulting from unvaccinated people infecting vulnerable individuals including children, some of whom are unable to receive vaccinations because of their age or health conditions.

Pan said that measles had spread through the state and the country in large part because of communities where many people were unvaccinated — and allowed to remain so citing “personal belief exemptions” — offered by California and 19 other states.

In certain pockets of the California, Pan noted, exemption rates are as high as 21 percent, which he said, “places our communities at risk for preventable disease.”

Supporters of the SB 277 include Vaccinate California, which sponsored the bill, as well as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the California Medical Association, the California State Parent Teacher Association, Santa Cruz and Los Angeles counties, and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

Opponents of the bill include the California Chiropractic Association, the California Naturopathic Doctors Association (unless amended), the California Right to Life Committee, the Homeschool Association of California, Families for Early Autism Treatment, the California Pro Life Council, and the Pacific Justice Institute for Public Policy.

In the analysis, the American Civil Liberties Union of California wrote that while it appreciates that vaccination against childhood diseases “is a prudent step that should be promoted for the general welfare,” it does not believe there has been sufficient need “to warrant conditioning access to education on mandatory vaccination for each of the diseases covered by this bill.”

The civil rights group also cited reforms enacted by Assembly Bill 2109, authored by then-Assemblyman Pan in 2012, and which became law but only went into effect on Jan. 1, 2014. It mandates that parents must meet with a medical professional and attest that they had discussed the risks of not vaccinating their child before they could opt out.

That law’s reforms, said the ACLU, “should be allowed an opportunity to work before they are stricken and replaced by an approach that restricts the fundamental right to education.”

Meanwhile, the Association of American Physician and Surgeons noted that the need for informed consent “is a firmly established principle of medical ethics and human rights,” and that the state “has no right to force medical interventions on people without their consent.”

Similar arguments last month swayed legislators in both Washington and Oregon to reject attempts to tighten their vaccine laws as California is now attempting to do.

Even if the bill passes today, it will still have to wind its way through several other committees in both houses of the Democratic-controlled Legislature, then be signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, before it could become law.

Kennedy — who says his six children were vaccinated — has said he is “fiercely pro-vaccine,” as long as they are safe. But he contends that thimerosal remains in trace amounts in more vaccines than people realize.

During an hour-long talk on the subject at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on Tuesday, he repeatedly questioned the integrity of the CDC, at one point calling it “a sock puppet for the vaccine industry.” The CDC’s refusal to acknowledge there is an autism crisis, Kennedy added, “is like global warming denying, but worse. It’s Holocaust denial.”